Try something new: Collingwood teen builds Chinese lion dance team

Camille Castillo Buehler was captivated when she experienced her first traditional Chinese lion dance performance.

“In Grade 1, I saw my first lion dance show by a troupe from a neighbouring school,” begins the 13-year-old Collingwood Collegiate student. “Ever since then, I started practicing on my own.”

Her family was living in Toronto at the time. And every lunar new year, the lion dance troupe returned.

Everything about the performance thrilled her: the vivid costumes, the movements, the music. It was unlike anything she had seen before.

And it provided her with a solid connection to her heritage. So she consumed what she could online, on YouTube and through several books to learn more about her heritage and the dance.

Although she’s one-quarter Chinese, she had very little connection to her family’s past, explains her mom, Debbie Buehler, who was raised in Toronto. Her mom, Camille’s grandmother, was Chinese but was raised in Guyana and immigrated to Canada in 1960s.

To their absolute surprise, the Buehlers were able to locate two lion heads for children reasonably priced on Kijiji, although that involved travelling to Ottawa and Toronto. You can’t really do the dance without the head, Castillo Buehler reasons.

When her family moved to Collingwood three years ago, she felt the absence of the dance and decided the community should not be deprived, so she set out to assemble her own troupe, learning about the dance and its meaning along the way.

“We started a club that hopes to promote the art of traditional Chinese Lion Dance. We’re just trying to get people interested,” she says, adding that she and her team members are keen to teach others.

Although they don’t yet have a full team, the non-profit Lunar Eclipse Lion Dance group has been practicing and performing locally.

Right now the group consists of three other girls, aged 10 to 12, even though dance was traditionally performed by males. But six people are required: one for the head, one for the body, one for the gong, one for the drum and two for the symbols. So Castillo Buehler is hoping to grow her group.

When weather permits, they can be found practicing at Collingwood’s Friendship Gardens where Castillo Buehler shares her knowledge of the dance. They have all the necessary instruments, save for the drum, which they’re currently trying to source and are still working on the music which she describes as complex.

Meanwhile she’s currently in the throes of making a new lion head – constructed from a bamboo frame, covered in cheese cloth and it will have a paper mache exterior with painted feathers and fur. The elaborate design includes eyelids as well as ears that move, a horn on top and a nose, which is traditionally green.

There is also an intricately decorated fabric body piece that covers both dancers and includes a tail trimmed with fur. Each of the two dancers wear pants in a similar fabric. The team members wear a shirt they’ve had made with the team's crest which is a lion head eclipsing the moon.

She figures it will take her three years to complete.

Castillo Buehler and her mom also practice karate and their sensei has allowed the team use of the space for practicing.

And they’ve already performed, appearing at Collingwood’s Canada Day parade this past summer as well as at a dinner at the ItosuKai Karate tournament and at the ItosuKai Karate grand finale in Collingwood in June.

“It was out of necessity and I think the desire to teach other people about this passion of hers,” said Debbie of her daughter’s passion.

For more information check out the team’s website and YouTube channel.